An HLA‐based framework for simulation of large‐scale critical systems

Evaluating the dependability of large‐scale critical infrastructures is a very difficult task that requires sophisticated modeling practices and experimentation environments/infrastructures. In particular, simulation of complex distributed systems require the integration of several different simulation tools and real‐time prototypes or emulated subsystems, which have to inter‐operate in a coordinated way. This paper presents a framework integrating simulation and emulation‐based subsystems, which is able to provide greater realism of the scenario under test. However, integrating simulation and emulation is a challenging issue because of the different time domains and to the communication overhead between the different time models, as well as to the large number of involved entities. Therefore, the high level architecture has been used to perform integration in a robust and standardized scenario. A cloud‐based virtualization platform has been adopted in order to reproduce complex system architectures on an elastic and adaptive locally controlled testbed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.